Policies & Politics

In the Policies and Politics section, we will present comments by us as well as links to advocacy articles in the field of early child care. Some of these articles may be ours and some are those of others that we pass along, sometimes with observations from us. The views expressed here are our own and not necessarily those of our publisher or other sources on, or linked to, this website.

NIC STONE IS AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN MOTHER of a four-year-old son. She lives in Atlanta and is married to a bi-racial man who is Jewish. Her African-American son attends a Jewish pre-school that he loves. But on a recent visit with her child to the Martin Luther King Center, as she toured the exhibits including the […]

WE WOULDN’T THINK THAT FOOD and inadequate nutrition would be an issue in our country but it is, particularly among parents and young children as well as pregnant women, according to a recent report published by Zero to Three, a national organization dedicated to promoting healthy development of children and families, and Clasp a group that […]

(This article is an edited update of a previous post on the subject of CHIP.) DISPLAYING AN ATTITUDE OF SHOCKING DUPLICITY, the Republican majority in the US Senate this month proposed to extend the Children’s Health Insurance program for six years but only as part of an overall package on immigration. If the immigration bill […]

A CHILD’S BRAIN forms more than a million connections every second, faster in the first three years than in any other period in his life. During this period, his future physical, social, emotional and intellectual development is being determined by his experiences. It is axiomatic that good health, secure and stable families, and supportive relationships […]

A YOUNG CHILD’S BRAIN IS SO PRECIOUS for a human being’s future development that it cannot be overstated. Authorities in the field of child development have long demonstrated that the human brain and its nerve connections develop most rapidly in the earliest years. To interfere with that development is to condemn a person to a […]

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BUDGET, released in June, “largely turns its back” on babies and children, warns Zero to Three, an organization deeply committed to the healthy development of children and families. “Babies don’t exist in a vacuum… they live in families,” and this budget’s “explicit intent is to redefine compassion away from ordinary working families and […]

While most people think of economic policy as a national issue and child care as a family issue, the two are really both national and family issues. With both parents in so many families working to make ends meet in today’s economy, affordable child care is a must – not just for pre-K but beginning […]

IN A SHARP CHALLENGE to the new administration and Congress, Zero to Three, an organization dedicated to the well-being of young children, parents and families, has called for enactment of legislation to vastly improve the status of early child care in America. “Four million babies will be born in theUnited States during President Donald J. Trump’s first year in […]

AS IF ANY PROOF WAS NEEDED, a recent study led by University of Chicago Professor James J. Heckman, a Nobel laureate in Economics, finds that children between eight weeks and five years enrolled in high quality child care went on to have more successful lives. This is particularly true of children from economically disadvantaged single […]

Seventeen years ago, the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine released a report that has become a landmark in the field of child development. The report, From Neurons to Neighborhoods, opened a national discussion of early child development and its broader implications for our society. It massively documented and discussed how a child develops from […]

by Nettie Becker Cuban children dancing for their American visitors The pre-school children danced around on the area in front of the room, their colorful costumes flowing as they whirled. Behind them, a young boy played his guitar, accompanying them as the audience of the children’s parents and their foreign guests clapped their hands in rhythm […]

Paid Parental Leave Is Also An Election Issue While a number of advanced industrial countries now have paid leave for new parents as national policies, there is no such policy in the United States where very few workers can take time off after the birth of a child. Some workers can take unpaid time off […]